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HRTalk is our Interview Series with the leadership at HR Technology companies that are redefining the way HR functions. Join us as we talk to them about their solutions, their insights about HR as a function and some bonus pro-tips on making HR Tech work for you!

The war for talent is raging and you might just win if you have technology by your side. Chris Cho, CPO at Monster shares his insights on major trends shaping the recruitment technology landscape, employer branding and AI-powered recruitment. Prior to Monster, Chris led the product teams at major HCM and Recruiting Technology companies. He embodies “mindshare ahead of marketshare” - a philosophy that is behind the consumer and commercial success for many of his products that are relevant, loved, and lauded.

The online job board industry is a crowded marketplace today. Monster being one of the first major players in the market, what are the key competitive advantages that keep it relevant for both job seekers and employers?

If you look back at the development of the online job board industry, Monster was the pioneer in the mid-90’s. Since then, there has been a recent explosion of new players out there—and it’s starting to resemble the wild west. Employers and seekers have more options than ever, which is a good and bad thing. The good news for us is that increased competition across the board has encouraged us to think of ways we can improve the process and reduce the friction for both ends of the equation. The bad news is that it’s challenging for recruiters and candidates to make sense of their options.

What is powerful about Monster is the history we have in the industry and the range of tools we provide to the recruiting and HR community. Our nearly 25-year history has given us a unique perspective and unique insights on both employers and job seekers. In that time, we’ve also developed a suite of solutions that range from marketing services to technology solutions. We’re able to provide customers access to core solutions like job ads and resume search, but also an RPO service called Talent Fusion and employer branding products. So where we have advantage is our ability to be an end-to-end solution provider for our clients.

Now, we’ve also done some wrong by both our customers and clients, but we’re reforming our ways. We’re focusing on helping people advance their lives, and are working on new ways for job seekers and employers to showcase the best versions of themselves.

What trends have you seen in recruitment technology and how specifically is Monster reacting to them?

It’s definitely an interesting time in the recruiting industry. This is one of the tightest labor markets we’ve seen in recent years – maybe even decades. The economy is strong and employment numbers indicate consistent, solid job growth. At the same time, we’ve got mismatches between talent and openings: We see high-skill fields like healthcare and technology struggling to fill openings. And other fields where there is a surplus of talent.

Part of matching is helping our customers reach passive qualified talent where they are—our social job ads, for example, allow you to access people in a field via platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Our integration with Google allows people to find our ads even when they’re in search mode on that platform.

But we also believe in the need to create tools that will enable seekers to present the best version of themselves to potential employers, and for employers to present an appealing description of their job posting and company. We’ve started with some of that on the seeker side, like our free resume assessment powered by machine learning which helps people improve their candidacy. And there’s more where that came from. Plus, we’re working on products that will enable greater results on the recruiting side as well.

Do see the role of external recruiters shrinking as recruiting technology attains more maturity?

A lot of HR technology companies are putting their weight behind blockchain. Are you also exploring blockchain applications for talent acquisition at Monster?

We are always keeping our eye out for the latest and greatest technology advancements—especially if we think there’s a potential benefit for our customers and users. Blockchain has definitely been a hot topic in our industry and beyond, and we’re following the development of it. It’s highly dynamic and, although we aren’t working on anything related today, we will incorporate it if or when we see opportunities to leverage it as a way to improve solutions for seekers and employers.

Let’s talk a bit about employer branding. What are companies doing to stand-out? Any trends that caught your attention recently?

According to a recent study, nearly half of consumers (42 percent) distrust brands. And, in some cases, these consumers are also potential employees. If nearly half of consumers don’t trust brands—why would they want to work at yours? How brands present themselves to potential employees is becoming increasingly important to the job search process. Seekers want a picture of the company they’re applying to and will do their research before they apply—what’s it like to work there? What are the values that drive everyone to contribute? How diverse is the culture? (Over half of the 300,000 respondents to a Monster survey said they review company websites as part of the apply process.)

Knowing the importance of employer branding, we’re working with our customers to enhance—and in some cases build—their employer value proposition and brand, and enable seekers to explore and discover companies that match what they desire in a workplace. Ultimately, if companies are presenting the best version of themselves, they’ll be able to attract the best candidate for the roles they’re looking to fill.

In terms of trends in 2018, we see employer branding being deployed with more tactical efficiency than ever. A strong and coherent employer brand allows for consistent messages on multiple online platforms, and for recruiters to start adapting their interview and sourcing methods to harmonize with the brand. In fact, we’ve surveyed companies on this topic and more than half say that investing in employer brand has improved recruiting outcomes.

You were appointed as the CPO at Monster in 2017, what have been your biggest challenges so far?

I joined Monster in September 2017, and as with any new role, there have been both expected and unexpected challenges! It’s incredible to be at a digital company with a legacy of more than two decades—few of our peers from those early days are even still standing!—but it means that some of our infrastructure was dated. And there was also a period of time in our history where there was a bit of product neglect. So phase one here has been about fixing what was broken and getting us to have the underpinnings of a modern tech company. That has been exciting though. With essentially a brand new leadership team in place, the energy here is palpable. We’ve developed a startup mentality and people are eager to take the company to the next level. We’ve made great progress, and now I think we’re all eager to get to the next phase of product development: providing innovative solutions for our customers.

Artificial intelligence is a buzzword in HR, and you being at the intersection of technology and HR, how do you look to Artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc.?

A.I. is capable of shrinking the time you spend on repeatable, menial, and mundane activities within sourcing, searching, and engaging job seekers. However, the technology doesn’t currently play a huge role in HR, as it’s still in its infancy of being implemented in meaningful ways that make a direct impact. What you frequently see today are things like chatbots—which serve an important purpose, but are often not true A.I.

Monster already leverages an aspect of A.I. in machine reading and learning—including in our resume search/matching and resume assessment tool. And we’re working towards launching A.I. that continues to push the candidate matching boundaries. Like smartphones that are able to recognize faces in photos, we can recognize the seeker, their capabilities, and their potential in order to match them with jobs. We anticipate that A.I. will learn from seeker and employer responses in order to provide better matches in the future.

What questions are your users asking you? How is that impacting your platform’s roadmap? Are there any new features or upcoming upgrades that you’re excited about and would like to give us a sneak peek into?

We’re constantly interacting with our users, gathering feedback and looking for ways to improve the user experience—for both seekers and employers. Some of the common frustrations we heard include the lack of transparency (or response) from recruiters, how long it takes to apply to jobs, and a lack of understanding on where to even begin. We’ve started to address those, and others, in a series of enhancements we recently announced that directly align with our commitment to the job seeker. Some recent changes we implemented include:

Updating search algorithms and results to ensure that we’re matching the right people to the right jobs.

Removing ads from search results to help remove an added layer of friction.

Improving page speed to get 97.5 percent of our job view pages to load in less than one second to reduce time wasted.